Re: Establishment Messiah

I caught a brief snippet of a radio talk show the other night where one of the analysts was describing the problem of politicians needing to spend so much time raising money in order to get elected. “We must do something!!” It’s obvious to me that the reason that campaign fundraising is so important is because these guys have too much power. Buying people like Obama off can have great rewards, such as a financial bailout.

So I was happy to see this analysis of state corruption. The conclusion is that transparency in government can increase the incentive for corruption, presumably because the rewards are more apparent. Additionally, the researcher found that more centralized power contributed to more corruption. These conclusions are obviously true, yet many are duped into thinking that we can somehow “fix” the campaign system in this country without addressing the vast centralization of power.

(Link via PhysOrg)

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12:26 pm on October 10, 2008